More than two years ago, I left my motherland France to visit Iran for the first time. Today, in January 2020, I’m writing to you from Tehran, where I live, to answer a question I thought belongs to the past: “Is Iran safe?”

These are not easy lines to write. At the start of 2020, Iran is in grief, crying the loss of hundreds of people, mostly Iranians, in the crash of the Ukraine International flight. We are all, whatever our nationality, impacted in our lives by the tragedies Iran has lived for the past year: from economic crisis to the fear of conflict between the US and Iran.

Grief over the deaths of 176 people killed– mostly Iranian-Canadian, Ukrainian, and Afghan –when their plane came down outside Tehran had conquered the hearts of Iranians over the country after the government admitted that the Iranian military had shot down the airliner “unintentionally”, and promised an investigation.